Talk:Bank Heist/@comment-192.196.142.21-20140821150135/@comment-25408491-20150316171642
The previous anonymous posts (from August 2014) were in fact some of my earliest contributions to the wiki. It's fair to say that I've come a long way from there (level 30?) to nearing Infamy V. I still basically never open lockboxes, but the previous write-up was prior to the implementation of the Fugitive tree (Sixth Sense), the skill tree changes (Control Freak) and Preplanning which have slashed my BH:Cash time to closer to the 15 minute mark (my record is somewhere around 10 mins iirc) dependent on how agoraphobic the guards turn out to be. I have to admit that I haven't really gone to the trouble of recalculating the $/min values for it. For the record, I'm now largely working on the full set of Spycams, a dead-drop keycard and Sixth Sense Aced to pick it up. The spycams slash the failure rate (as I'm less likely to get surprised while pagering someone else) and mean that I rarely miss an opportunity to nail a guard as he wanders outside or upstairs. The keycard isn't necessary, but it saves waiting for the bank manager if the stars do align (and I get two wandering guards before he pokes his head outside) and saves an ECM for popping both ATMs. With DP Aced, that basic vault & 2 ATM clearance can be up to about $4M (8 bags cash, an over-estimate of the average in my experience, but common enough), or roughly 0.25M$/min. Your estimates on full vault clearances roughly match mine, giving perhaps $4M max from the lockboxes - comparable to the "basic" vault clearance of bags and ATMs only. Lockpicking has become faster with the inclusion of the Burglar deck, but the 1s delay between interactions starts to become a critical factor as the act of opening a box, taking the contents, then starting the next lockpick becomes a 10s operation at least. In all, a full vault clearance is still going to be somewhere around the 20 minute mark - maybe slightly more than the "basic" vault clearance. Conclusion : Your mileage may vary, but it's relatively finely balanced IF '''you have quite a high level stealth build. ---- Adding team-mates to the equation gets complicated - you'll be able to lockpick faster, but you'll also be able to deal with the guards and start drilling sooner. You're probably right though, bringing a team-mate with a matching skillset will be faster. Faster still would be to have a team-mate with a completely different build (i.e. a saw-freak setup). ---- I agree entirely that Deposit is a tragic waste of time ''when it comes to $/min.' ''The XP is still worth having. Gold can spawn up to 5 stacks of gold on the table - they take up more space than money and therefore only 5 will fit on the table instead of the 8 cash bags (and no gold will ever spawn on the trolley / stepladder). Given that gold is worth nearly twice as much as cash, it's worth running for the financial gain. Note : Control Freak and Sixth Sense make BH much, much easier than it was prior to CrimeFest, which means that I very rarely need to restart it. Prior to those changes, accessing the keycard / security room could be very difficult indeed. Hence I'm much happier to do the Pro variants. ---- Ultimately though, the reason I haven't retested lockpicking is in your last line : "Of course, then you might as well go for the more lucrative heists." I'm now using Bank Heists primarily to reduce the XP penalty for grinding two of the more lucrative stealth heists : Shadow Raid and The Bomb: Dockyard. This morning I cleared the latter (admittedly thanks to some good luck with spawns) in 17 minutes - giving about $9M and much, much more XP. Next up : Train.